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Caves of Chaos

Been working this weekend on the largest map I've ever taken on with CC3, The Caves of Chaos, in preparation for running a D&D Next playtest. Here's how it's shaping up so far:

Using a lot of art from the CSUAC and SMAC collections. Some of the stuff will be hidden on the final map (like the pit) but I've really had a lot of fun with this map. I started off by taking the old-school blue map and dropping it at the bottom layer and scaling it to fit my grid. Then I built all the rooms, sometimes just drawing the floor then walls, other times (like the caves) using multipolys to make cut-out sections of the floor.

I'm still using standard effects on the sheets, once I get all the symbols stamped in I'll start tweaking with things like the transparency of the grid lines, shadow lengths and maybe some light sources. Note that I haven't settled on the floor and wall fills yet; with CC3 it's sooo easy to change them later.

I'm still tinkering with it slightly, but I've started running the game using this map. It's a 50px:5f grid scale, so the detail isn't super sharp, but it's also a 6900x4500 image, and I just didn't want to go any bigger. I saved it as a 30% quality JPG though, so I'm actually pretty pleased with how legible it is, all things considered.

As the game progresses, I might cut out 100px:5f battlemaps of the individual lairs for each of the tribes.

The Caves of Chaos is a dungeon out of one of the first D&D modules, B2 Keep on the Borderlands. The caves are inhabited by kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, ogres, bugbears, quite a few different monstrocities, and finally the Cult of Evil Chaos. The hobgoblin leader, for example, has nice furnishings, while the rest mostly have cots. The kobolds on the other hand sleep on skins or skins stretched over a frame, or just piles of rubbish. The adepts and acolytes of the cult sleep on expensive beds with dressers and braziers.